Give disadvantaged people more than others so they can rise to the same level as everyone else.

But they usually don't rise to the same level as everyone else. Some black leaders who were against affirmative action in college admissions called this decades ago. If you let someone into a school and they aren't prepared for the workload, they fail and all that does is make them feel worse about themselves.

So they should hire an under/less qualified candidate because they had a rough childhood? That doesn't make good business sense and causes a host of other problems. You're then asking the rest of your employees to pick up the slack of the under qualified candidate which will breed resentment.

I'm sure situations like what OP described exist, but to consider them prevalent is hyperbole imho.

Women enjoy a 2:1 hiring preference over men in STEM fields. Ex Amazon recruiters admitted they were given bonuses for hiring people who aren't white males, and some were specifically told they already have enough white men on their teams so don't even bother scheduling interviews with more of them. Google is being sued left and right for discrimination against white men.

Which is funny because if it did actually, the problem of minority under representation would have already been fixed.

Wrong. First there would have to be enough non white male candidates to fill all the open roles and there just aren't enough to go around, especially when every company is desperately trying to hire as many as possible.